Nurses and other attending staff in a hospital ward or hospital wing work under conditions involving high pressure, stress and long hours. These caregivers must remain alert to respond to patient needs, in both emergency and non-emergency situations. Due to economic practicalities and the ever-increasing costs of medical care, it is necessary to make the most efficient use of nurses and staff on call in a hospital wing, particularly at night when nurse and staff levels are maintained at a minimum.
On the other hand, a desire to optimize the efficiency of nurse and staff personnel is of secondary importance relative to the primary objective, that of providing a high level of medical care to a patient. If nurse and staff levels are reduced for the sake of efficiency without any corresponding simplification of duties and responsibilities, the level of patient care will decrease. Therefore, it is desirable to maximize the efficiency of nurses and staff on call in a hospital wing, but to do so in a manner which does not increase the work load or stress levels of these professional caregivers nor decrease the level of patient care.
One approach to maximizing the efficiency of nurses and other hospital staff involves the use of a location and identification system to continuously monitor the various locations of these persons. For instance, White U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,385 discloses a personnel locating system where individuals to be located wear infrared transmitters, and each transmitter transmits a pulse-coded signal which corresponds to the identity of the wearer. A number of other U.S. patents also disclose personnel locating or monitoring systems which purport to improve upon the system disclosed in the White patent. However, these improvements relate to the mechanics of signal detection, or the organization, maintenance and retrieval of stored information for making reports. These patents do not disclose a communication system which helps nurses and staff do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively. Furthermore, even with such automated communication systems which allow retrieval of information at a central, remote location, certain traditional tasks have still been handled locally at the patient location and have required the hospital personnel to physically be present with the patient to visually observe the patient or the status of the equipment utilized by the patient.
One such traditional task of hospital nurses and staff is to monitor the condition or status of a large number of hospital patient beds. Currently available hospital beds are equipped with a variety of mechanical and electrical systems related to patient care, and these systems must be monitored to ensure proper care. For example, the condition of the mattress surface as well as the shape of that surface must often be monitored by the attending staff to ensure that the patient is in the proper position and will not suffer from skin breakdown or other ailments due to an extended time spent in the bed. Furthermore, it is often necessary to know whether the patient is actually in the bed or has exited the bed, despite the request of the attending personnel. Still further, various other mechanical bed conditions must also be monitored to determine that they are working properly or are in a desired state. With conventional beds, the status of the bed is revealed at either headboard or footboard consoles or in a console located on the wall inside of a patient room. Therefore, monitoring the bed status requires attendance of personnel within the room to locally view and interpret the various bed consoles. Not only is such a task time consuming, but certain bed status conditions, such as whether the patient is still in the bed, should be responded to as soon as possible rather than at some predetermined interval that corresponds with scheduled patient visits by the attending personnel.